Tartessos () is, as defined by archaeological discoveries,Construyendo Tarteso a historical civilization settled in the southern Iberian Peninsula from about the late Bronze Age until the 5th century BC. It had a writing system, named as the Southwest script, that includes some 97 inscriptions in an unknown language which is unclassified for lack of data. Tartessos was the first "entity located in southwestern Iberia to be recognised as a kingdom".
In the historical records, Tartessos () appears as a semi-mythical or legendary harbor city and the surrounding culture on the south coast of the Iberian Peninsula (in modern Andalusia, Spain), at the mouth of the Guadalquivir. It appears in sources from Greece and the Near East starting during the first millennium BC. Herodotus, for example, describes it as beyond the Pillars of Hercules.Herodotus, The History, i. 163; iv.152. Roman authors tend to echo the earlier Greek sources, but from around the end of the millennium there are indications that the name Tartessos had fallen out of use and the city may have been lost to flooding, although several authors attempt to identify it with cities of other names in the area.
The Tartessians were rich in metals. In the fourth century BC the historian Ephorus describes "a very prosperous market called Tartessos, with much tin carried by river, as well as gold and copper from Celtic lands". Trade in tin was very lucrative in the Bronze Age, since it is an essential component of bronze and is comparatively rare. Herodotus said a king of Tartessos, Arganthonios, welcomed the first Greeks to reach Iberia, Phocaeans who sailed from Asia Minor.Herodotus, 1:163
Pausanias wrote that, to commemorate an Olympic victory, the Sicyonian tyrant Myron built an Ionic treasury of bronze from Tartessos.Pausanias, Description of Greece, 6.19.1Pausanias, Description of Greece, 6.19.2
The people from Tartessos became important trading partners of the Phoenicians, whose presence in Iberia dates from the eighth century BC and who built a nearby harbor of their own, Gadir (, , present-day Cádiz).
Location
Several early sources, such as Aristotle, refer to Tartessos as a river. Aristotle claims that it rises from the Pyrene Mountain (generally accepted by modern scholars as the Pyrenees) and flows out to sea outside the Pillars of Hercules, the modern Strait of Gibraltar.Freeman, Phillip M. (2010). "Ancient references to Tartessos", chapter 10. IN: Cunliffe, Barry and John T. Koch (eds.), Celtic from the West: Alternative Perspectives From Archaeology, Genetics, Language And Literature. No such river traverses the Iberian Peninsula.
According to the fourth century BC Greek geographer and explorer Pytheas, quoted by Strabo in the first century AD, the ancestral homeland of the Turduli was located north of Turdetania, the region where the kingdom of Tartessos was located in the Baetis River valley (the present-day Guadalquivir valley) in southern Spain.
Pausanias, writing in the second century AD, identified the river and gave details of the location of the city:
They say that Tartessus is a river in the land of the Iberians, running down into the sea by two mouths and that between these two mouths lies a city of the same name. The river, which is the largest in Iberia and tidal, those of a later day called Baetis and there are some who think that Tartessus was the ancient name of Carpia, a city of the Iberians.Pausanias Description of Greece 6.XIX.3.
The river known in his day as the Baetis is now the Guadalquivir. Thus, Tartessos may be buried, Schulten thought, under the shifting wetlands. The river delta has gradually been blocked by a sandbar that stretches from the mouth of the Rio Tinto, near Palos de la Frontera to Almonte, the riverbank that is opposite Sanlúcar de Barrameda. The area is now protected as the Parque Nacional de Doñana.
In the first century AD, Pliny the ElderPliny, Natural History, 3.7. incorrectly identified the city of Carteia as the Tartessos mentioned in Greek sources, while Strabo just described the area without mentioning Tartessos. Carteia is identified as El Rocadillo, near S. Roque, Province of Cádiz, some distance away from the Guadalquivir.Talbert, Richard J. A. (ed.). Map-by-Map Directory to Accompany the Barrington Atlas of The Greek and Roman World (2000), p. 419. In the second century AD, Appian thought that Karpessos (Carpia) was previously known as Tartessos.
Archaeological discoveries
The discoveries published by Adolf Schulten in 1922 Schulten (1922). Tartessos. Hamburg; Spanish tr. Madrid, 1924, 2nd ed. 1945). first drew attention to Tartessos and shifted its study from classical philologists and antiquarians to investigations based on archaeology,The historiography of Tartessos is surveyed by Carlos G. Wagner, "Tartessos en la historiografía: un revisión crítica". although attempts at localizing a capital for what was conceived as a complicated culture in the nature of a centrally controlled kingdom ancestral to Spain were inconclusively debated. Subsequent discoveries were widely reported: in September 1923 archaeologists discovered a Phoenician necropolis in which human remains were unearthed and stones found with illegible characters. It may have been colonized by the Phoenicians for trade because of its richness in metals."Dig Up Phoenician City", New York Times, September 26, 1923, p. 3.
A later generation turned instead to identifying and localizing "orientalizing" (eastern Mediterranean) features of the Tartessian material culture within the broader Mediterranean horizon of an "Orientalizing period" recognizable in the Aegean and Etruria.
J. M. Luzón was the first to identify Tartessos with modern Huelva, based on discoveries made in the preceding decades. Since the discovery in September 1958 of the rich gold treasure of El Carambolo in Camas, Seville three kilometres west of Seville,Carriazo, J. M. El tesoro y las primeras excavaciones en 'El Carambolo' (Camas, Sevilla) (Excavaciones Arqueológicas en España), 1970. and of hundreds of artefacts in the necropolis at La Joya, Huelva,Garrido, J. P. (1970). Excavaciones en la necrópolis de La Joya, E.A.E. archaeological surveys have been integrated with philological and literary surveys and the broader picture of the Iron Age in the Mediterranean basin to provide a more informed view of the supposed Tartessian culture on the ground, concentrated in western Andalusia, Extremadura, and in southern Portugal from the Algarve to the Vinalopó River in Alicante.The results of Tartessian archaeology as of 1987 were summarized by
Turuñuelo archaeological site
Significant discoveries were made at Turuñuelo archeological site in Guareña, where excavation began in 2015. The site was declared bien de interés cultural (National heritage site) in May 2022.
Two ornate stone busts, featuring details of jewelry and hairstyles which are thought to be the first facial representations of the Tartessian goddesses were discovered in 2023.
These sculptures are somewhat similar to the Lady of Elche sculpture from Alicante, which are dated between the 5th and 4th centuries BC, considerably earlier. Fragments of at least three other busts have also been recovered and one of them is attributed to a warrior because part of his helmet is preserved.
In this region of southern Spain, the Tartessian culture was born around the 9th century B.C. as a result of hybridization between the Phoenician settlers and the local inhabitants. Scholars refer to the Tartessian culture as "a hybrid archaeological culture".Carolina López-Ruiz, Michael Dietler 2009 (eds), Colonial Encounters in Ancient Iberia: Phoenician, Greek, and Indigenous Relations. University of Chicago Press. p.194
Metallurgy
Alluvial tin was panned in Tartessian streams from an early date. The spread of a silver standard in Assyria increased its attractiveness (the tribute from Phoenician cities was assessed in silver). The invention of coinage in the seventh century BC spurred the search for bronze and silver as well. Henceforth trade connections, formerly largely in elite goods, assumed an increasingly broad economic role. By the Late Bronze Age, silver extraction in Huelva Province reached industrial proportions. Pre-Roman silver slag is found in the Tartessian cities of Huelva Province. Cypriot and Phoenician metalworkers produced 15 million tons of pyrometallurgical residues at the vast dumps of Riotinto. Mining and smelting preceded the arrival, from the eighth century BC onward, of Phoenicians and then Greeks, who provided a stimulating wider market and whose influence sparked an "orientalizing" phase in Tartessian material culture ( BC) before Tartessian culture was superseded by the Classic Iberian culture.
"Tartessic" artefacts linked with the Tartessos culture have been found, and many archaeologists now associate the "lost" city with Huelva. In excavations on spatially restricted sites in the center of modern Huelva, sherds of elite painted Greek ceramics of the first half of the sixth century BC have been recovered. Huelva contains the largest accumulation of imported elite goods and must have been an important Tartessian center. Medellín, on the Guadiana River, revealed an important necropolis.
Elements specific to Tartessian culture are the Late Bronze Age fully evolved pattern-burnished wares and geometrically banded and patterns "Carambolo" wares, from the ninth to the sixth centuries BC; an "Early Orientalizing" phase with the first eastern Mediterranean imports, beginning circa 750 BC; a "Late Orientalizing" phase with the finest bronze casting and goldsmith work; gray ware turned on the fast potter's wheel, local imitations of imported Phoenician red-slip wares.
Characteristic Tartessian bronzes include pear-shaped jugs, often associated in burials, with shallow dish-shaped braziers having loop handles, incense-burners with floral motifs, fibulas, both elbowed and double-spring types, and belt buckles.
No pre-colonial necropolis sites have been identified. The change from a late Bronze Age pattern of circular or oval huts scattered on a village site to rectangular houses with dry-stone foundations and plastered wattle and daub walls took place during the seventh and sixth centuries BC, in settlements with planned layouts that succeeded one another on the same site.
At Cástulo (Jaén), a mosaic of river pebbles from the end of the sixth century BC is the earliest mosaic in Western Europe.
Timeline (10th-5th century BC) Tartessic occupation sites of the Late Bronze Age that were not particularly complex: "a domestic mode of production seems to have predominated" is one mainstream assessment.Wagner, in Alvar and Blásquez 1991:104. An earlier generation of archaeologists and historians took a normative approach to the primitive Tartessian adoption of Punic styles and techniques, as of a less-developed culture adopting better, more highly evolved cultural traits, and finding Eastern parallels for Early Iron Age material culture in the Tartessian sites. A later generation has been more concerned with the process through which local institutions evolved.Essays from both points of view are found in Alvar and Blázquez, according to the review by Antonio Gilman in American Journal of Archaeology 98.2 (April 1994), pp. 369-370.